Can Sitewell check redirects as Googlebot?

No. Every request identifies as SitewellBot, so a rule that treats a named crawler differently will not reveal itself here. For that specific test, use a checker with user-agent selection.

What does Sitewell show that a plain trace does not?

The response time of each hop and the total redirect delay before the destination starts loading. That turns a chain from a structural observation into a measured cost, which is usually what decides whether it gets fixed.

Can I trace many URLs at once?

Yes, through the redirect mapper. Paste a list of URLs and it reports the final destination and status of each, which is the practical way to check a migration rather than sampling by hand.

Will Sitewell catch a redirect loop?

Yes. Requests follow up to ten hops and stop there, and the redirect loop checker reports the cycle explicitly instead of leaving you to notice a URL repeating in the list.

Alternative to redirect-checker.org

redirect-checker.org alternative

redirect-checker.org traces a redirect path and lets you change who is asking. Requesting a URL as a search engine crawler rather than as a browser is its defining feature, and it is a genuinely useful one, because plenty of redirect rules key off the user agent.

Sitewell does not do that. What it does instead is time every hop, take a list of URLs rather than one, name a loop when it sees one, and re-run the whole trace on a schedule. The two tools answer questions that overlap without being the same question.

Side by side

Aspect	redirect-checker.org	Sitewell
Request as a chosen user agent	Yes; that is the feature it is known for	No; every request identifies as SitewellBot
Hop detail	Status code and target for each hop in the path	Status code, target and response time for each hop
Several URLs at once	One URL per trace	The redirect mapper takes a whole list
Loops	Visible in the trace as a repeating path	Named outright by the redirect loop checker
Repeat checks over time	Built around on-demand tracing	Redirect monitors re-run the trace and alert on change
Other checks in the same place	Focused on redirects	Status codes, SSL, broken links, headers, meta, robots, DNS, vitals

Where they win

When redirect-checker.org is the better choice

Use it whenever you suspect the redirect depends on who is asking. A rule that sends a search engine one way and a mobile browser another, a firewall that treats an unfamiliar crawler differently, a geo or device redirect that only fires for some visitors: none of that shows up in a tool that always announces itself the same way. Sitewell always announces itself the same way, so for that diagnosis it is the wrong instrument.

The same applies when you need to confirm what a specific crawler receives. If a page is missing from an index and a conditional redirect is the suspect, seeing the response for that user agent is the check, and no amount of timing detail substitutes for it.

And as with any single-purpose tracer, if the URL belongs to someone else and you need the answer once, there is nothing to gain from a tool built around repetition on your own site.

What Sitewell does differently

Every hop is timed. A chain of three 301s that each answer in twelve milliseconds is a tidy problem; the same chain with one hop that takes four hundred is a different problem entirely, and a trace without timings shows them as identical. The redirect speed test sums that into the delay before the destination begins loading, which is the number worth putting in front of whoever has to approve the fix.

Scale is the second difference. The redirect mapper accepts a list, so verifying a migration means pasting the old URLs and reading the report instead of tracing twenty by hand and assuming the rest are fine. Loops get named rather than inferred, which matters when the symptom people report is a browser error message and not a status code.

The third is duration. A monitor re-runs the trace on a schedule and alerts when the path changes, which catches the hop that a plugin update or a new CDN rule adds months after anyone last looked at the redirect map.

Frequently asked questions

Can Sitewell check redirects as Googlebot?: No. Every request identifies as SitewellBot, so a rule that treats a named crawler differently will not reveal itself here. For that specific test, use a checker with user-agent selection.
What does Sitewell show that a plain trace does not?: The response time of each hop and the total redirect delay before the destination starts loading. That turns a chain from a structural observation into a measured cost, which is usually what decides whether it gets fixed.
Can I trace many URLs at once?: Yes, through the redirect mapper. Paste a list of URLs and it reports the final destination and status of each, which is the practical way to check a migration rather than sampling by hand.
Will Sitewell catch a redirect loop?: Yes. Requests follow up to ten hops and stop there, and the redirect loop checker reports the cycle explicitly instead of leaving you to notice a URL repeating in the list.